a fifo wife {fifo life: bloke stuff: mental illness and places lost}

He sat across from the table from me, he was sad I knew it he just didn’t know I knew. We have known each other from high school and bumped into each other again just last year while he picked up his nieces and nephews from school. I hadn’t recognised him without any hair his blonde boyish locks gone, but he instantly grabbed me and hugged me like an old friend. Its Mark he said. I looked at his big blues, heard his voice and went yes it is.
Six months on here he sat. It felt so good to see an old friend again, but there was something not right, and so I started.
“You know John took his life last year,” I said. His eyes wide as I continued, John had gone to school with us.
No, he said shocked.
I wasn’t when I heard. John had always struggled. You could see it if you listened and watched hard. So when, I heard I wasn’t surprised. And yet when I heard about Paul, Michael and Vernon I was.
That’s how many young men I know that have been lost to a mental disease. That haven’t become fathers, which have left wives and children behind. All unnecessarily so and that is the part I can never understand the unnecessariness of it.
“Why do you think this happens?” I said to Mark trying to start a conversation. He looked at the bottom of his empty cup. “Some of it’s a genetic disposition,” he said but then “we as men boys have lost our place in society.”
“What do you mean?” I asked?
“You as women no longer require us. You don’t need us to hunt for you, care for you; you don’t even need us to make babies for you anymore. Our place is lost. We are just here. Look at you” he said “I offered to mow the lawn for you and what did you say. I don’t need a man bam Deb that hurt and I’m not even your husband”.
It hurt the way he said it back to me. “that’s not what I meant” I said to him “I wanted you to know I was capable. Not to worry about me. I don’t need a man I want one and that’s the difference. I’m a proud, independent woman, and my husband loves me this way. I’m capable of doing it myself. Should we turn back time I asked?”
“No,” he said, “we want you to thrive as women no to go back to being less than but where does that leave us?” ”
To love and support us” I said.
He sighed. “But we are men and often we are taught that loving is for sissy’s and admitting that we are hurt because we don’t know how to do that more so. We haven’t evolved emotionally as women have. Simply have not.”
I looked at him. He still looking; at the bottom of his cup still not looking at me. Me crying because I could see he was lost.
“Admitting is half the key,” I said to him. “I don’t understand the shame in mental illness,” I said
“I know,” he said, “but I do because I’m a man.”
“Mental illness is no different to any other illness,” I said. “It’s a chemical imbalance in the brain that happens for whatever reason. Like an imbalance of iron or B12, it requires medication a change of lifestyle to fix it. Where is the stigma in that” I asked him?
“The brain is the holder of your emotions Deb that’s the part you do not understand.”
“No,” I said, “it’s the part we are not evolving enough in men.”
He looked at me the first time in our conversation and smiled.
“I love you Mark,” I said and “I need you as my friend that’s your place for me.”
“Yeah,” he said, “me too.”

Xx Deb

{image with thanks to here}
If you or someone else you know needs help, please contact Lifeline on 131114

Great post Deb. I lost my father 30+ years ago, so hard to watch someone go through this and live a life anguishing what we could have done to change things. A hardworking proud man too proud to talk to his mates and too deep in depression to ask anyone for help. It's sad to see that we haven't been able to change much in all these years. Women have been taught the greatest gift if sharing their emotions and alleviating some of the stress I pray for your generation of boys with great mums to be able to enhance their communication skills so they don't end up feeling this way

About the wife..

I can't sew, multi-task or wear white. I can however change a tyre, ice a cake and bait a hook. I'm outnumbered by boys 4:1 and recently found I like to write. Honesty is my speciality, especially about this life of mine. I am, I have been told, a control freak but I have to be. Every second month we're a FIFO family of the offshore kind. We love it but unless you work hard; this life will swallow you up, spit you out and not always whole. These are a few things I wish someone had told me.